And Justice For All. Stephen Ellmann
finger painting. Five colours were on offer but only two could be chosen. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and deciding that she could no longer be part of such a mean school, she managed without being observed to walk out, and find her way home on foot, crossing the main highway of Harrow Road on the way. Her mother, shaken by this, decided that a firmer environment was required and sent her to a convent. But she was made of sterner stuff. The nuns failed to beat a fear of god into her, or to break her spirit. One result of that was that when we got married she refused to have a religious ceremony, and we went quietly and discreetly to the Magistrate’s Court to get the certificate that made our union lawful.15
This is by no means simply a story of a very determined, perhaps even ‘stubborn’, little girl. As Arthur tells it, Lorraine’s objection is partly to absurdity, but partly – substantially – to injustice. She herself felt that she was more emotional than he about issues of justice and injustice; he would later say to her that she had taught him the meaning of justice. Their good friend Ilse Fischer Wilson said that Lorraine was Arthur’s moral compass, even though he was a very moral person too.16 We will encounter her moral force more than once; one example, was Arthur’s repeated statement that Lorraine should receive as much recognition as he did, and that especially when they were younger, she understood the society far better than he did.17 And they must have discussed all these things: Rosemary Block recalled that they were entranced with each other’s thinking, had huge conversations, and both enjoyed them.
They were married on Arthur’s 30th birthday, 24 November 1961, less than a year after they had met. Arthur had wanted to get married even sooner, but Lorraine held him off. She turned 19 six weeks earlier, on 11 October. The marriage certificate declares that they were married with ante-nuptial contract, but the contract does not seem to have had the divorce-anticipating function of such documents today. Instead this document, agreed to by Arthur and Lorraine and notarised six days before their marriage by Arthur’s roommate Julian Block, makes it clear that the parties each retain their rights to their income and property rather than being in community of property, frees Lorraine from the potential impact under the law of that era of Arthur’s ‘marital power’, and also has specific financial commitments from Arthur to Lorraine:
That further in consideration of the said intended marriage, the said ARTHUR CHASKALSON hereby agrees to give and donate to the said LORRAINE DIANNE GINSBERG the following property namely:
(a) Assets in cash or in kind or partly in cash and partly in kind to the value of R10,000-00 (TEN THOUSAND RAND);
(b) Certain Policy of Insurance effected on the life of the said ARTHUR CHASKALSON to the value of R10,000-00 (TEN THOUSAND RAND) and the said ARTHUR CHASKALSON undertakes to pay all premiums in respect thereof as the same fall due from time to time;
(c) A dwellinghouse to the value of R14,000-00 (FOURTEEN THOUSAND RAND) together with furniture and household effects, at such time as the parties together decide.
AND the said LORRAINE DIANNE GINSBERG does hereby declare to accept the aforesaid gifts and donations.
I am not certain whether these promises were all literally carried out, though given Arthur’s scrupulous observance of obligations they likely were. For one thing, the Chaskalsons’ home was registered solely in Lorraine’s name. The marriage certificate also indicates that there was a ‘consent filed’ – probably a consent by Lorraine’s father to her marriage before attaining the age of 21, which the law of that era would have required.18
Lorraine recalls that the small wedding party included Lorraine’s parents, Arthur’s mother and perhaps his stepfather, and their friend Hillary Kuny. Also on the scene was a friend named Tony Coghan, who Lorraine recalls (though Coghan does not) had designed Lorraine’s dress from the Marimekko material she was fond of. The dress, Lorraine recalls, was a pyramidal structure – Coghan was an architect – which she believes made the magistrate think she was heavily pregnant. The magistrate was also annoyed that Lorraine was sitting on the wrong side of Arthur. But Coghan did not attend the wedding itself. Lorraine told him that the ceremony would be no big thing, and suggested he stay outside. If Lorraine discounted the moment of her marriage, however, she didn’t discount the friendship with Coghan, whom she and Arthur would stay with in London in later years.
The decision to get married in the magistrate’s court was not a trivial one. Arthur’s mother wanted them to get married in the synagogue, but Lorraine felt she could not bear to have the wedding that Arthur’s mother Mary would have organised. Finally, Lorraine told Mary that she didn’t believe in God and would feel wrong getting married in the synagogue – and Arthur’s mother acquiesced. But there was more, either from relatives or elsewhere. According to Arthur’s older brother Sydney, their Uncle Jack Chaskalson warned Arthur and Lorraine that if they were married in the magistrate’s court their children would be illegitimate. This may have led to a longer process of estrangement, or may have been enough in itself to sever relations; in any event, Sydney’s recollection is that Arthur never spoke to Uncle Jack after this. In another related episode, which Lorraine often recounted, the person who circumcised Matthew told Lorraine that he wouldn’t let his daughters marry Matthew – and Lorraine responded that she wouldn’t let Matthew marry his daughters. As it was, Lorraine picked out a jade ring, which she thought was the one most likely to please her mother-in-law; but Lorraine didn’t wear rings, and after trying to wear this one for a little while, she developed skin problems, and took it off.
The lines Lorraine drew within her new family were not the last she would insist on. She also drew a sharp line between their home and the home of Arthur’s mother – refusing to go to her mother-in-law’s house for Shabbat dinner on Friday evenings and (as she ruefully recalled later) bringing a book to read when they went, instead, to Sunday lunch. Years later, their son Matthew’s wife Susie, a psychotherapist, would say that part of what Lorraine brought to Arthur was precisely the ability to draw this sharp dividing line, and so to complete the long, slow process by which Arthur had taken himself out of his mother’s home. Given the difficulties Lorraine faced in her home, it is easy to infer that just as she freed Arthur from his birth family, so Arthur freed Lorraine from hers.
But on 24 November 1961 they were creating bonds rather than breaking them, and the bonds between them lasted the rest of their lives. That day, after the magistrate’s court ceremony, Arthur went back to his chambers and did some work. Then the newly-weds went to the apartment of Hillary and Denis Kuny. Pictures from that evening show a young couple who look happy and, as Lorraine said to my wife and me, tired. They didn’t immediately take a honeymoon, but the beginning of their marriage was not overwhelmed by work, for the South African summer holiday was fast approaching, and they went for a honeymoon then in Europe. They stopped first in Paris, where they saw Sydney Lipschitz and his wife; sadly, their small son had just died, two days before the Chaskalsons arrived. Then they moved on to London, where they stayed with Lorraine’s former boyfriend Richard Kuper; the three of them had a profound talk, and after that apparently their stay went fine, and the Chaskalsons’ connection with Kuper endured throughout Arthur’s life.
When they returned to South Africa, they set about making a house and a home. They lived first in Arthur’s flat in Hillbrow, but then moved in 1963 to a house in Atholl, Sandton, where they would live for the rest of Arthur’s life. They also soon began a family; Lorraine was pregnant in her third and final year as an undergraduate at Wits. Friends of theirs at the time had an ‘open marriage’ and Lorraine recalled that she asked Arthur, ‘Should we have an open marriage too?’ He answered, ‘I think we should keep that part just for us,’ and that was that. Again, if Arthur found in Lorraine someone who could help him declare his adulthood, she perhaps found in Arthur, her older, level-headed and extremely talented husband, someone to help guide her into adulthood too.
Their first son, Matthew, was born on 12 August 1963. It’s part of Chaskalson family lore that Matthew was born when his father was cross-examining in the Letsoko case, the subject of much of the previous chapter. Because Matthew’s birth was induced, and so had to be scheduled, everyone around the court became aware of it. At one point, Lt Swanepoel – whom Arthur bluntly cross-examined about his treatment of the suspects in Letsoko – spoke to Arthur, and told him